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The Individual and the social system:

We all sometimes feel isolated in a world which seems determined to thwart our needs, deny our perceptions and foist false upon us. In 1984 this feeling is cast into a fantastic form and pursued to a horrifying extreme.

While this ease of identification is a major source of the book’s appeal, it is the particular nature of the nightmare world Winston inhabits which accounts for the enormous impact that the book has had. Winston’s rebellion is not directed simply against a repressive job or unsympathetic parents, but an infinitely more alarming antagonist, totalitarianism.

Many of the book’s original readers, having witnessed the relentless mass cruelty unleashed by Hitler and Stalin, naturally asked themselves whether such a system could ever develop in their own countries. It was undeniable that throughout the first half of the 20th century there had been more and more government intervention in people’s lives in all developed nations, and that this trend had been accelerated by the Second World War. Orwell believed that greater government power was not only inevitable but was the only practicable way to bring about a more equal and democratic society, yet he feared that it could all too easily end in totalitarianism, a closed society where everything and everyone was controlled by a rigid dictatorship. The best way to avoid the danger was for people to be aware of the problem and vigilant in ensuing that it did not come about. 1984 was written to assist in this task.

Orwell takes some of the worst features of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, imagines them refined to a vicious perfection by time and improved technology, and projects them onto the Britain of the near future, giving us an alarming reading experience which will encourage us to oppose this evil, plus a clear model of what it is that we should oppose. The book makes it clear that the power of totalitarianism does not derive simply from the power of the state, immense though it may be, but also from the weakness of the citizens. While the proles are victims because they are uninterested in politics and accept government as they do the weather, intellectuals like Winston are contrastingly vulnerable to the impressive-sounding philosophical arguments which the rulers to justify their power and the pseudo-religious promise that, in joining them, individuals will be accepted into a protecting order, freed from the anxiety, guilt and weakness which are actually a normal part of the human condition.

While totalitarianism is Orwell’s chief target, 1984 also conveys a suspicious of modern life in general. Much of what Orwell foresaw has since come into being- television, security cameras, the 24hour clock, metrication, a loss of Britain’s status as a great power- but so far without the sinister consequences which he linked to these developments. Orwell’s skepticism towards modernity can still be defended, however, for a major theme of the book is the struggle of the individual to lead an authentic life, fully in touch with their feeling, in a ‘packaged’ world of media manipulation and social expectation. To Orwell the good life is only loosely linked to affluence and technology; it has satisfying relationships, with self-knowledge and closeness to the basic facts of life. The book suggests that future developments may bring into being social forces so powerful that they can cut off the individual from these sources of health and leave him or her a victim of manipulation from above. The form this alienating society can take maybe as brutal as in the 1984 or a pleasure obsessed, affluent one as in Brave New World, but the worry is the same, and arguably it a concern which should not be lightly dismissed.

Context: Key Questions:
How is this theme influenced by or representative of George Orwell’s own context? What do you think the ending tells us about how Orwell viewed this struggle? Why do you think he ends the book the way he does? How might you link that to context?


Other themes to consider:

Loss of humanity
Social division
Control through language
Technological advancements
Control through technology